Shovel & A Stopwatch
I've forgotten what fall looks like
Weather wets the string and threads another week of 85 degrees
While blood clots at the turnpike
Bachelors wander pockets stuffed with rings
I'm disappearing daily to the trees
The future's near
I'm hoarding every penny from the street in case we're out of change
Before your reappear
Remind me of the life between monotonies
Digging our new place to be
I've created something tiny
Jeopardy: what is a DMZ?
A trench, a safe of light and shadow for our dreams
That's right!
The future's near
I'm hoarding every penny from the street in case we're out of change
Before your reappear
Remind me of the life between monotonies
And all the weeks spent struggling to spell sentences
Like "I am here" and "We are fine"
Carving out small corners of the sky for you and me
Let's count up the days of our separate stories
Let them count against our separation
You said with conviction, "There must be time for us somewhere."
I quick-clicked off the stopwatch and led you into the trees
The future's here
And now it's safe to settle
From under here
We'll block the city with our thumb
It took a year
But now there's room for anything
So many possibilities
Like weeks to spend on sentences
Like "We are here" and "spin the globe"
I did my best to make a little home for you and me
From Orbit
The questions aren't getting far as there's no sound
You never heard me before-- you sure won't now
But how big would I have to be
For you to finally notice me?
A stargaze mystery
I'm the strange satellite you see
I'm way up here
I'll stay up here
In the palm of my hand
The planet turns
Places we’ll never go
Begin to burn away
In which of these slow dying stars
The last call lights of closing bars
Are you asleep or scared to dream?
The dark sings nightmare songs
But follow the moonbeams
If a shadow passes through, it's just me
From way up here
(I'll keep you safe from far away)
I'll stay up here
(Just look up I'll keep you safe)
I'm drifting off
I'll hold you close
I'm way up here
(I'll keep you safe from far away)
I'll stay up here
(Feel so at home so far away)
I want you nearby
I want you with me
To see the world
The way it looks
From above
Midnight Kids
We're midnight kids in our ride and confides
We're the loud ones stuck in the cheapest seats
Speak soft in leftover hours of night
To the future as if it was listening
Let's think about the might it might have taken
A generation's best
To reach from small towns into school texts
But that trail's been run so much
There's nothing left for us
But persevere and tape together headlines
Of a world beyond our means
Wait for word to come from upstream
Follow bread crumbs through the city
Watch the ships blow out to sea
We don't have to go home yet
We can lock the doors and try
To diagram our distance from
The perfect selves we do our best to be
Until the night knows better
Until the night knows better
List the ways we hide from passing headlights
Cause we're more broken than we seem
A web of days dismissed as bad dreams
The parking lots at holy hours
Hide our crevices in comfort
Comfort food and conversation
Tell me how you wish you could be more
How you don’t know what you’re here for
How our promises feel real right now
But I don’t think I’ll remember in the morning
We don't have to go home yet
We can lock the doors and try
To diagram our distance from
The perfect selves we do our best to be
Until the night knows better
Until the night knows better
Come on, let’s drive
We don’t have much time
We're midnight kids in our ride and confides
We're the loud ones stuck in the cheapest seats
Speak soft in leftover hours of night
To the future as if it was listening
We’re midnight kids playing footloose and fast
Our clothes stuck to the wet paint of growing up
But for tonight the streets are where we survive
With our four seat speeches and storms in teacups
Midnight kids, we're driving all night long to find a thing we lost inside
Before it's time to go
Boys and Their Balloons
I can't drag a line between horizon and the sky
Every step could change how I'm remembered now
With friends like these I'm doing fine
It's the cold vs. our design
The dark is far behind the bright white outside
Remember what father said?
Stand tall, walk on
You're a man
And you've got to make history
Now I try to take a photograph
So the world could understand
But I can't feel my hands
How the moments tease and tickle me
Swim beneath my frozen teeth
How the whole wide world would crack from the weight
Of everything I've achieved
I see boys and toy balloons
Of blue and yellow sailing high
Who would've reached to rhyme success with progress
If I had never tried?
Maybe I cut corners
Maybe I told tiny lies
But nothing that size could have thrown us from the sky....
My body screams for an excuse
The dark's spreads out
Is it possible?
Could I have done something---
NO, I know where we're going
I know where we're going
Remember the victory
Papers and interviews
And our wives will be jealous of everything
And I ponder how it'd feel to walk a saint upon the streets
But I can't feel my feet
Quick! Look! Man, we're here!
We're the country's beating wings
Get an audience with the King
And the congregation sings
The congregations sings, yeah
But I can't feel a thing
Where are we going??
Where are we going??
Life After LA
Watch our history go
Turned over in a game of concentration
In reverse
At first
I lost sleep on your explanations
Until the realization
I'm not safe with you anymore
When LA finally slides into the sea
We'll watch on our TVs
Stay home and grieve
But day by day, there's drift in the memory and morning priorities
Shift away from the ache
And that's you and me love
It's history now and that's all it ever will be
I'd say a word and we'd see
Venn diagrams combine and share a meaning
Smile, draw and turn, they match
We spent hours on names and finally found a great one for the future
But you don't call it that anymore
I'll pull on my side, you pull on yours
When LA finally slides into the sea
We'll watch on our TVs
Stay home and grieve
But day by day, there's drift in the memory and morning priorities
Shift away from the ache
And that's you and me love
It's history now and that's all it ever will be
History now and that's all it ever will be
History now, and that's all, that's all
You've got friends
In the writer's room
I've got friends
Rewriting too
And they'll both convince us we're the more mature ones
You're getting up
And you miss me
I'm getting up
Guess what?
In the moments right before these memories close up
I will get better
Don't you interrupt
We made our separate ways out
With water round our ankles as we both looked on
LA finally fell into the sea
We watched on our TVs
Oh God, I grieved
And day by day
The months mowed the memories that both of us could have kept safe in the morning hours but
It'll never come back
History now, and that's all you ever will be
North in the Morning, Pt. I
In between the pitches of winter on our city's bones
And the flatline crackle of our radio's lullaby
We found a spark
North in the morning
To a dream that diluted over days into a whisper
Then a scream all at once
I think we're gonna make it
In between the seconds that bled into these years alone
And the skin-deep questions that will rash where they lie
We pulled at the dark
Holding close and folding
Till we caved in, traded numbers, bodies, names, until a curse word brought back meaning gone for months
Set sail
In between the glaciers rehearsing Excalibur's stone
And the racks where stillness was sovereign until our warm breath aside
You could call it an ark
The equator in the morning
Where the thaw begins and these seeds will leave their daze of exposure
Getting closure in the safety of the soil
I think we're gonna make it
I think we're gonna make it
Montana
Montana
This is the last time
Gather everything we're owed and we'll be gone
Montana
Look out the window
At the shadows getting long in setting sun
Follow them past town
Into the deep frown of the cornfield rut we used to run
I promised you my share we'd never go back there
But I'd do anything
To see Mom and Dad again, so
Let's go home, it's been too long
Don't know what we are but I know it's gone wrong
Let's go home, let's finish strong
Could we learn tonight what we know each dawn?
Montana
Where are you going?
If you need to talk, why can't you talk to me?
Montana
You know I couldn't stop you
If you leave me with the screen door swinging, doppler sirens
Blue all around red – The ocean and hot lead
What comfort would, “I told you so,” be
Thrown at your memory?
Cut in the old tree
Yeah, I'd do anything just to keep you there with me
Let's go home, it's been too long
Don't know what we are but I know it's gone wrong
Let's go home, let's finish strong
Could we learn tonight what we know each dawn?
Now the streetlights
Fight the moon's light for monopolies on who's seen more
Don’t walk away
Remember we swore we’d always get out of here
But you’d rather stay
Stay breaking bottles and searching the splinters for signs
What’s got the best of you?
Poisoned your point of view?
We could still make it through
But I think I’m losing you
Montana
Guess I've got an answer
Give me all the time you can and I'll be gone
Object Lesson
*player piano goes nuts*
Roseland
I'm making history today
A few more hours, after parties and parades
I'll scratch my last line in this drywall
A tally for the ones that I leave behind
There are so many ways to wait
One's filling calendars with arbitrary dates
And all your deadlines turn to fantasies
Till the night before the morning when it's time
This is the last time I will be
What this place has made me
I'll be a stranger in this household
By this time next year
And finally
I see where the sidewalk ends
And it's not in poetry
So I'm trying to pretend
But all I know
Is I want to stay
I don't know when all this changed
The streets got wider to accommodate the barricades
Top off these sore thumb towers with people
As we ration all our time left to feel alive
I'll put a capstone on these words contained within these walls:
"No one ever told me seeing the world meant leaving yours behind"
This is the last time
I will be what this place has made me
A lover's touch I won't remember
By this time next year
And finally
This town's a ballon untethered from memory
I know I'll leave in the end
This is my home
But I can't stay
We Didn't
Will you take your share of blame or will you take the glory?
Han or Greedo, who shot first in your spin on the story?
Who broke the window
Who threw the stone
Who swore we’d never be sleeping alone
Who promised when last summer’s facepaint came off
We’d still know who we were
We said we would be honest
But we’re not now
Nothing hurts like memory
We were friends last time it snowed here
If you’re wondering why I haven’t called
Well, I don’t wonder
I lay awake, poking sticks at the past
The crosses we made on our hearts much too fast
I see them still poking like stubborn white roots from the soil
And I could pretend it meant more than it did
But the story is tired and I want to forget
So slowly the details get lost in the fray
The moral stays the same:
We said that it was perfect
But it wasn’t
And this’ll be the year I move mountains
At least that's what I repeat to myself
We said the world would miss us
But it doesn’t
I know
I can’t be mad
I’m sure you’ve settled in your choices
As uncomfortably as I
They ask me
If I know you at all
I plug my thumb into the dike
I force a smile and say
I used to
And our friends
Are done taking sides
If they hear me tell the tale again
It honestly might kill them
So I think
It’s time to admit
We were young and we were half-complete
With words that lacked conviction
So it really doesn’t matter
If we said that we would make it
Climb
Why keep your company with wishes
As you break another day
Out into sections where the (made of) pitch shifts
Every time you say her name
My darling
She's not coming back
Hon, you're stuck on repeat
In a perfect past
But all of it's gone
Come down
She's not coming back
But you can sing to the streets
On your crooked mast
Your faltered lines
We’ll burn that bridge tomorrow
But for now you’ve gotta climb
Up in the crow’s nest with your yearbook
You call
“I think I used to love how stars look
Now I’m just afraid to fall”
I’m not sure what I can say
But here’s a bet:
If I get you to laugh out loud in the next 10 minutes
Tell me everything
She's not coming back
Hon, you're stuck on repeat
In a perfect past
But all of it's gone
Come down
She's not coming back
But you can sing to the streets
On your crooked mast
Your broken rhymes
We’ll burn that bridge tomorrow
But for now you’ve gotta climb
And she's out there
But don't you worry about her now
Why wallow lonely?
Why wait for a sign until tomorrow?
She's not coming back
Now you're stuck on repeat
In a perfect past
But all of it's gone
Come down
She's not coming back
But you can sing to the streets
Ride your crooked mast
Your faltered lines
She’s not coming back
And it shows on your cheeks
But I promise you
it’s safe to sleep
She’s not coming back
But she won’t make you complete
Take your time to grieve
We’ll be right here
It may not be tomorrow
But you’re gonna be fine
North in the Morning, Pt. ii
In between the movement from one phase of life to the next
And the dull ache of longing for something I'd never again believe
I ended up at the world's end
In the new year
With no friends and no familiar stench of home
Just silent snow
And sunless space to walk and listen for myself
I thought I'd finally found forever
Though we'd both seen better weather
We were close enough to sky to carve the clouds out
Buckets in hand we climbed
And you said, "Everything rhymes:
Our amount of time, the dimes we find on sidewalks chime in pockets miming wedding bells and lockets for a future we find in reoccurring dreams.
Everything rhymes with you and me."
But seconds from the top I turned for you
And you were gone
Making your way back down
I panned for gold in sounds of silver
But I never got to see your face again
So now we touch down in separate towns
I'm up here
You're somewhere I can't see
I guess you finally found a better home than me
And you're happy
While I'm here in what was supposed to be our city
But if this isn't your place
Then it's mine
And I'm going outside
As the sunless day claims to start
Recite reminders of the future (just the good parts)
I've got the snow my friends
A city, just my hands to keep me warm
A headline gig I've got to make
I think I'm gonna make it
I think I'm gonna make it